The invention, which is in the area of protective engineering for energy distribution facilities, is concerned with the structural configuration of a surge arrester, with an insulating housing and with a metal oxide resistance arranged inside the insulating housing, such that the metal oxide resistor consists of two or more columns, connected electrically in parallel, made up of a larger number of resistance elements, of which each column has two separate holding plates between which the resistance elements of the column are arranged, and which in turn are joined by means of insulating holding rods which laterally immobilize the resistance elements.
Surge arresters with a metal oxide resistor as the shunting element generally consist of a plurality of flat cylindrical resistance elements arranged in columnar fashion one above the other, the column formed by these resistance elements being arranged inside a ceramic or plastic insulator tightly sealed at the top and bottom ("IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery," Volume PWRD-1, No. 1, January 1986, pp. 151-156; FIG. 6).
To increase the energy handling capacity or to reduce the residual voltage, it is common in the case of metal oxide shunts to connect a plurality of resistance columns made up of individual resistance elements in electrically parallel fashion. For this purpose, two to four columns are arranged next to one another, inside a common insulating housing, on a support plate by means of which they are inserted into the common housing. This is known, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,232.